Category Archives: Uncategorized

A Tale of Two Museums: Part 1 — The Cleveland Museum of Natural History

mwilson December 6, 2011 3:33 pm

Last week I had the marvelous opportunity to visit two very different museums with Wooster Geologists. This is the first of two posts with short vignettes of the memorable sights and sounds. The first museum was the Cleveland Museum of … Continue reading →

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“Whisky Stones” of Vermont: A Wooster Geologist Connection

mwilson December 5, 2011 6:35 am

The following is a guest blog post from Wooster Geology Senior Lindsey Bowman, a native of Londonderry, Vermont: A metamorphic rock composed mainly of talc, soapstone is found all over the world and has unique qualities such as high heat … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A new microconchid genus and species (Permian of Texas)

mwilson December 4, 2011 1:50 am

Two years ago I was invited to Texas by Tom Yancey (Texas A&M) to look at some curious wiggly tubular fossils in the Lower Permian (about 280 million years old). They form small reefs a meter or so across and … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: an orthid brachiopod (Upper Ordovician of Indiana)

mwilson November 27, 2011 12:56 am

This beautiful brachiopod is Vinlandostrophia ponderosa (Foerste, 1909), an orthid brachiopod from the Maysvillian (Upper Ordovician) of southern Indiana. Until recently it had been traditionally known as Platystrophia ponderosa until a critical paper by Zuykov and Harper (2007) investigated the … Continue reading →

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Wooster Geologist on the Crampton’s Gap Battlefield in northern Maryland

mwilson November 26, 2011 8:13 pm

In September 1862, Union forces under General George B. McClellan pursued General Robert E. Lee‘s Army of Northern Virginia through northwestern Maryland. Lee had invaded Maryland to demoralize the North ahead of the November elections, and to convince Europe that … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: a baculitid ammonite (Cretaceous of Wyoming)

mwilson November 13, 2011 1:50 am

This is a specimen I often place on my Invertebrate Paleontology course lab tests. It is the “straight” ammonite Baculites, which is common enough, but the shell and internal walls (septa) have dissolved completely away, leaving this strangely articulated set … Continue reading →

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: an Italian keyhole limpet (Pliocene of Cyprus)

mwilson November 6, 2011 1:39 am

This week’s fossil is a beautiful little gastropod (snail) scientifically known as Diodora italica (Defrance, 1820), and commonly as the Italian Keyhole Limpet. I collected it with Steve Dornbos (’97) during the 1996 Keck Geology Expedition to Cyprus, where it … Continue reading →

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George Davis (’64) gives the Thirty-First Annual Osgood Memorial Lecture

mwilson October 25, 2011 11:47 pm

WOOSTER, OHIO–We were greatly honored this evening to have one of our own, Dr. George Davis (Wooster ’64), present the 31st Annual Richard G. Osgood, Jr., Memorial Lecture. The Osgood Lectureship was endowed in 1981 by the three sons of … Continue reading →

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Exploring the Silica Formation (Middle Devonian) in Northwestern Ohio

mwilson October 22, 2011 7:25 pm

PAULDING, OHIO–There’s nothing like the stirring rings of 50 geologic hammers in the morning. Today I was a guest of the North Coast Fossil Club and my friend Brian Bade in a quarry exposing the Middle Devonian limestones and shales. … Continue reading →

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Wooster Geology Heads to Wayne Elementary

sjudge October 21, 2011 6:10 pm

On Friday afternoon, a group of Wooster geologists participated in an educational outreach program at Wayne Elementary. Marge Forbush, an educator at Wayne always asks the department to come to her classroom twice a year. In the fall, we spend … Continue reading →

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